Opinions on Piccolo Snares?

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Uladine

Uladine

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Whats your opinion on piccolo snares? Do you generally like their sound or do you preffer a deeper, fatter sound? What is your favorite snare sound? I know everyone has a way they love to tune their snare drum. (Or how they want their drummer to tune their snare.) Just curious.
 
I think Piccolo snares give a real nice tight crack. i have a fairly fat sounding snare on my kit, but i like to keep it as tight as possible. i would love to get a nice piccolo (i just need the damn mulah)
I think that they are best suited to some styles of music i think. Stuff like ska, some real heavy stuff, and stuff like Live and RHCP, but of course thats just my personal opinion.

Tim
 
I HATE Piccolo snares...to me they don't have enough "body" to them....the smallest I would go is a 5"x14"....and then I'd crank that down for a Stewart Copeland/Police high pitched "crack".

One of the best snares around for recording is a Ludwig ACROLYTE (It's a cheapo Cast Aluminum Snare) you can pick them up used all day long for $50 or less, and cranked down that's an incredible drum.
Kenny Aronoff (Smashing Pumpkins, John Cougar) swears it's his favorite snare to record with, and I'd agree with him.

I use an 8x14" Brass Free-floating Snare made by Pearl, myself.

Tim
 
I have a 3x13 maple and 3x13 steel. I get several comments on how good the 3x13 maple sounds. I personally like my 6x14 maple better, but since I got so many compliments on the piccolo I started using it more - I finally got a chance to hear a live recoring of a gig, and it did sound good.

I think funk/R&B, reggae/ska and certain pop works best for piccolo, and rock lends itself more to a deeper snare (although I see more and more rock setups with a piccolo).

Although I can understand Tim's dislike for piccolo (his posts have indicated that he prefers very big drums) I don't know if I completely agree with trying to tighten a bigger snare to get a "piccolo" sound.

Almost all drummers like the snare to be pretty tight, but I try to avoid getting any drum so tight that you choke the life out of it. I find you can actually tune a good piccolo down (a little) and get a fairly fat sound (and still get a crisp attack - without choking the drum).
 
Mics for piccolo snares

I am trying to record a piccolo and the SM 57 just doesn't seem to capture the crack of the snare like I want. I used a AKG C535eb but it picks up too much of the HiHat. I EQ'ed the hihat out but lost some crispness of the snare. I have it sounding ok for now but I want it to sound better. Any suggestions?

KaosTheory
 
If your micing ok, i.e. pointing the dead side of the mic towards the hi-hats, within micable and mic stand, and drummer comfortable reason, then maybe the drummer is just thrashing the hell out of the hi-hats.

Tell the drummer not to hit the hats so hard.
 
He does hit the hihat pretty hard. Thanks for the info.
 
Tim is right about one thing...

The ACROLYTE snare drums are cheap and end up sounding really good if you are using them for rock. I used to have a Pearl free floating aluminum snare (too loud for recording anything but metal/industrial) and the acrolyte was my second snare. It ended up being the best purches I made drum wise after the lovely recording customs, that is..


The one I used was a blue-ish gray but this is the current offering:
http://www.ludwig-drums.com/products/snares/alacrolite.html

Do beware, this thing has lots of clang if you don't mike it right...

As for piccolos, think they are great but I would stay with the wooden ones (maple, birch) not the metallic shells.

nP
 
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